Disabling Physical Drives Automatically

[Spiny]

Hi

hope this helps someone:

Some protections work OK from a mounted image if your physical cd drive is disabled (e.g. GTL & BF 2142).

To save you having to do this in device manager you can do this automatically using a microsoft tool, devcon.

Now, devcon can do all sorts of stuff, so USE WITH CARE. I'd imaging it's possible to do something like disable all the devices on your system. So as ever, this is at your own risk etc etc etc.

1. Download the devcon tool from here
   
2. The Zip package contains an ia64 and i386 version, so grab the i386 one & copy it to your windows\system32 folder.
   
3. Devcon can show you the status of devices with the status command:
   devcon status @ide\*
   gets you the status of all ide devices.
   For me, to get the status of my pioneer dvd drive it's
   devcon status @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   Have a play with that until you're happy you can select the right device to enable/disable.
   
4. Disabling & enabling devices are done with the disable & enable commands (duh ) So to disable, then enable my dvd drive I'd do:
   devcon disable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   devcon enable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   You can have device manager open while you do this & see the little red x appear when the device is disabled.
   
5. All you need then is a small batch file to call disable, the game exe then enable. Here's mine, but your device names & battlefield path will be different. The % parameters are for passing the ip address of the server.
   
   start /wait /B devcon disable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   start "battlefield" /D"E:\Games\Battlefield 2142" /wait /B "E:\Games\Battlefield 2142\BF2142.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6
   start /wait /B devcon enable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   

Have fun!

[solway]

if your editing the exe, be careful punkbuster doesn't get ya.

cheers anyway

[Kinlaadare]

Just on a side note, if you are using a x64 based OS, it's better to use the x64 version of the tool...

Great job Spiny!

Edit : the Ia64 directory seems to be for Ia64 processor only... (can't check atm)
by the way, the i386 version seems to do its job correctly under xp pro x64.

@solway there is no exe modification. Wondering where you saw that?

[Jito463]

Maybe he was thinking of imagecfg, which does modify the executable.

[grenz]

Hi
hope this helps someone:
Some protections work OK from a mounted image if your physical cd drive is disabled (e.g. GTL & BF 2142).
To save you having to do this in device manager you can do this automatically using a microsoft tool, devcon.
Now, devcon can do all sorts of stuff, so USE WITH CARE. I'd imaging it's possible to do something like disable all the devices on your system. So as ever, this is at your own risk etc etc etc.

1. Download the devcon tool from here
2. The Zip package contains an ia64 and i386 version, so grab the i386 one & copy it to your windows\system32 folder.
3. Devcon can show you the status of devices with the status command:
   devcon status @ide\*
   gets you the status of all ide devices.
   For me, to get the status of my pioneer dvd drive it's
   devcon status @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   Have a play with that until you're happy you can select the right device to enable/disable.
4. Disabling & enabling devices are done with the disable & enable commands (duh ) So to disable, then enable my dvd drive I'd do:
   devcon disable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   devcon enable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   You can have device manager open while you do this & see the little red x appear when the device is disabled.
5. All you need then is a small batch file to call disable, the game exe then enable. Here's mine, but your device names & battlefield path will be different. The % parameters are for passing the ip address of the server.
   start /wait /B devcon disable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*
   start "battlefield" /D"E:\Games\Battlefield 2142" /wait /B "E:\Games\Battlefield 2142\BF2142.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6
   start /wait /B devcon enable @ide\CDROMPIONEER*

Have fun!

I've made a console application which does just that.
Try it if you wan't on http://datafind.dk/smartstart.asp
It works by dropping the game exe or the shortcut to the game exe on the shortcut the installer makes on your desktop.
The advantage of dropping the shortcut instead og the exe itself is that any arguments in the shortcut will also be included on startup.